Spinoza, Baruch de (1632–1677)

Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher, is considered one of the greatest rationalists of the 17th century and one of the founders of modern Bible criticism. His works encompass metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and epistemology. with regard to his theory of time, the most striking feature of his ontology is the emphasis on eternity. Although the [Page 1190]philosophical investigation of physical time plays only a minor role in Spinoza's work, he highlights the inherent striving of each thing to stay in existence for an infinite time.

As a member of a Sephardic Jewish family living in Amsterdam, Baruch (also known as “ Benedictus”) de Spinoza enjoyed a classical biblical-talmudic Jewish education. Because of his sympathy for the rationalistic Cartesian philosophy and due to his critical Bible studies, he came into conflict with the Jewish community, from which he was expelled in 1656. In his philosophical work he initially follows Descartes. Spinoza presents Descartes's main philosophical ideas in the fashion of the geometrical method. In his Tbeologico-Political Treatise, published in 1670, he develops a political doctrine that aims at freedom of speech and at a limitation of the power of religion and churches. In his posthumously published chief work Ethica, he (again in a geometrical fashion) develops an ontology, which states that there is only one substance called “God or Nature” (deus sive natura). Individual beings therefore do not have a separate existence of their own but rather are modes of God.

Figure: Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish heritage whose independent thinking led to his expulsion from the synagogue in 1656. His philosophy was deductive and rational, as expressed in his book Ethica (1677)

Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62–122962.

The striking absence of a theory of time in Spinoza's Ethica is characteristic of his philosophical approach. His main interest lies in the understanding of the timeless structure of the universe, insofar as all of its parts express the eternal essence of God. In Spinoza's pantheistic worldview, all finite things are encompassed in God. Everything within this world needs a reason (causa) for its existence; only God exists through its own power (causa sui). According to Spinoza there are therefore two main ways of looking at things: either as existing in relation to a given time and place or as contained in God and following necessarily from his divine nature (cf. Ethica, Part V, Prop. 29, Note). Thus the temporal order is only one way of looking at things that also has the disadvantage that it does not reveal the eternal truth. While the imagination is mainly directed at the spatial-temporal order, reason is the capacity to look at the relation of the individual concepts to God's infinite and eternal essence under a form of a timeless, eternal perspective (sub quadam specie aeter-nitatis; cf., Part II, Prop. 44, Cor. 2).

with regard to the concrete physical time of objects, Spinoza states that all objects are either at rest or in motion. Motion occurs at different speeds, so that our notion of time is derived from the experience of things moving at different velocities (cf., ibid., Cor. 1, Note). Spinoza ascribes to each thing the endeavor (conatus) to persevere itself in its being (Part III, Prop. 6). In principle every finite thing would exist for an unlimited time. It is only through external causes that it can be destroyed. So just as well as everything needs a cause to come into existence, it also needs an external cause to vanish from existence.

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